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drnewmanon What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Ruby? (2013)

I would say more broadly the innovation was two fold: 1) to make these features available in a syntactic form that would seem more familiar to programmers and 2) the powerful insight that when combined with Smalltalk style meta programming you can have a language that on the surface seems very conventional but underneath is just as powerful as Smalltalk or Lisp.

Although I would say he didn’t get 100% there although that this point Ruby isn’t too far from that.

These are ideas that I think are worth trying to take even further. In fact, I’ve been experimenting with that.

drnewmanon What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Ruby? (2013)

I agree blocks are closures. But they’re call stack aware closures. Which gives them _some_ of the power of continuations.

I’m also sure you’re right that they’re not implemented using continuations. However, my understanding is that Ruby was originally conceived as a language with continuations. I’ll see if I can find a reference for that. But from what I recall reading in a blog post from someone who was at a programming language conference in 1997 when Matz introduced the language that’s how he described it.

drnewmanon What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Ruby? (2013)

Yes Smalltalk has continuations. So it can do all of those things as well. But I don't think they're explicitly tied to blocks like they are in Ruby. This really isn't a problem for Smalltalk since it's not as syntax oriented as Ruby.

The invovation is to have those features tied to convenient syntax.

drnewmanon What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Ruby? (2013)

I'd think the preferred way would be to implement them as a separate class. That'd be more in line with the design of other core classes (like TrueClass & FalseClass). It'd also have created the opportunity to create a "Callable" protocol early in the design which would have been great, and would harmonize with the design of Ruby's many other protocols Enumerable, Comparable, Range-compatible values, etc.

drnewmanon What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Ruby? (2013)

Yeah, I think I've heard that too.

drnewmanon What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Ruby? (2013)

That's insightful

drnewmanon What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Ruby? (2013)

Blocks in Smalltalk (to my understanding) are closures. Blocks in Ruby are closures that also bring the call stack they were created in with them.

One way to think of about it is this: anonymous functions as originally implemented in early Lisps are code as an object, closures are code with its lexical environment as an object. You can think of a Ruby block as code with its lexical environment and its call stack as an object.

So they don't just handle return differently than closures, they have access to the call stack of the site where they're created like a continuation. This is why they handle return differently, but this is just one of the things that falls out from that. It also comes with other control flow features like "redo", "retry", "next", "rescue", "finally", and others. These are all call stack control (control flow) conveniences, just like return is. All of them can be thought of as being abstractions built on top of continuations (just ask a Scheme hacker).

Originally Ruby was basically a Lisp without macros, but with continuations, a Smalltalk like object system and a lot of syntactic affordances inspired by Perl, and other languages. Blocks are one of the conveniences built on top of the Lispy semantics.

Note that I'm explaining how blocks work as an abstraction (vidarh below explains how they work as a concretion, as implemented in MRI).

drnewmanon What Is the Difference Between a Block, a Proc, and a Lambda in Ruby? (2013)

It seems you're pretty upset about your experience with Ruby. I'm sorry that's been the case for you.

However, in Ruby blocks aren't just about flexibility, more importantly they're about generality. They're not there to resolve an edge case at all (Ruby also has keywords for loops). They're a generalization of control flow that is just slightly less general than continuations. In practical use they provide an alterative to Lisp macros for many use cases.

These were some of the problems Matz was trying to sort out with his design of Ruby--creating a language that was fun and easy to use for day-to-day programming, with as much of the meta-programming power of Lisp and Smalltalk as possible. Blocks are one of his true innovatations that came from trying to balance that tension.

drnewmanon A visual demo of Ruby's lazy enumerator

Laziness is great for collections, and modeling the infinite but as a general model for programming it's a little loopy for my taste too ;-)

drnewmanon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (January 2025)

SEEKING WORK | Maine | Remote

Software Engineer, Product Designer & Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough problems.

Looking for short term engagements

Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume.pdf

Email: contact@delonnewman.name

Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name

Github: https://github.com/delonnewman

Highlights:

- Over 23 years of experience

- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare

- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel

- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher

- Polyglot developer, specializing in Ruby & JavaScript

- Enjoy working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)

- System integration & automation

drnewmanon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2025)

  Location: Maine
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No

  Technologies:
    Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript (TypeScript)
    Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
    Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
    OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
    Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js, Express
    Front-end: Vanilla, HTMX, React, Svelte, ClojureScript
    Other Languages: Clojure, Java, C, PHP, Perl, Bash, C#, Python, Swift, VBA

  Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume.pdf
  Email: contact@delonnewman.name
  Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
  Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/delonnewman

  Software Engineer, Product Designer & Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects,
  design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough problems.

  - Over 23 years of experience
  - Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
  - Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
  - Polyglot developer
  - Enjoys working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
  - System architecture & design
  - Looking for part-time or short term engagements

drnewmanon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (December 2024)

SEEKING WORK | Maine | Remote

Software Engineer, Product Designer & Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough problems.

Looking for part-time & short term engagements

Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/history

Email: contact@delonnewman.name

Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name

Github: https://github.com/delonnewman

Highlights:

- Over 23 years of experience

- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare

- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel

- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher

- Polyglot developer, specializing in Ruby & JavaScript

- Enjoy working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)

- System integration & automation

drnewmanon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2024)

  Location: Maine
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No

  Technologies:
    Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript (TypeScript)
    Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
    Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
    OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
    Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js, Express
    Front-end: Vanilla, HTMX, React, Svelte, ClojureScript
    Other Languages: Clojure, Java, C, PHP, Perl, Bash, C#, Python, Swift, VBA

  Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/history
  Email: contact@delonnewman.name
  Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
  Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/delonnewman

  Software Engineer, Product Designer & Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects,
  design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough problems.

  - Over 23 years of experience
  - Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
  - Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
  - Polyglot developer
  - Enjoys working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
  - System architecture & design
  - Looking for part-time or short term engagements

drnewmanon Repair and Remain (2022)

Thank you for clarifying that.

drnewmanon Repair and Remain (2022)

Thanks so much for sharing that. I'm so glad that you and your dear one have gotten to such a beautiful place! I had to learn a similar lesson with regard to self-love and care from dealing with type-1 diabetes. My aha came in the form of the phrase "love is maintenance".

drnewmanon Repair and Remain (2022)

True, but I think the point of the article is that, in modern life, we tend to err strongly in the other direction.

drnewmanon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2024)

  Location: New Mexico
  Remote: Yes, preferably or hybrid in Northern Maine
  Willing to relocate: Yes, Northern Maine

  Technologies:
    Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript
    Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
    Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
    OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
    Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js
    Front-end: Vanilla JS, HTMX, React, ClojureScript
    Other Languages: TypeScript, Clojure, Java, C, Python, Swift, Perl, Bash, PHP, C#, VBA

  Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume.pdf
  Email: contact@delonnewman.name
  Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
  Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/delonnewman

  Software Engineer, Product Designer & Analyst who’s able to help clients complete stalled projects,
  design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough problems.

  - Over 23 years of experience
  - Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
  - Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
  - Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
  - Polyglot developer
  - Enjoys working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
  - System architecture & design

drnewmanon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2024)

  Location: New Mexico
  Remote: Yes, preferably or hybrid in Northern Maine
  Willing to relocate: Yes, Northern Maine

  Technologies:
    Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript
    Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
    Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
    OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
    Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js
    Front-end: Vanilla JS, HTMX, React, ClojureScript
    Other Languages: TypeScript, Clojure, Java, C, Python, Swift, Perl, Bash, PHP, C#, VBA

  Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume.pdf
  Email: contact@delonnewman.name
  Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
  Github: https://github.com/delonnewman
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/delonnewman

  Software Engineer, Product Designer & Analyst who’s able to help clients complete stalled projects,
  design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough problems.

  - Over 23 years of experience
  - Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
  - Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
  - Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
  - Polyglot developer
  - Enjoys working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
  - System architecture & design
  - Gaining experience with NLP & ML

drnewmanon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (January 2024)

SEEKING WORK | New Mexico | Remote

Seasoned Software Engineer & Systems Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough data-oriented problems.

Looking for part-time (preferably less than 20 hours) or short term (3 months or less) engagements

Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume

Email: contact@delonnewman.name

Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name

Github: https://github.com/delonnewman

Highlights:

- Over 23 years of experience

- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare

- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel

- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher

- Polyglot developer, specializing in Ruby & JavaScript

- Enjoy working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)

- System integration & automation

drnewmanon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2024)

  Location: New Mexico
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No 

  Technologies:
    Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript
    Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
    Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
    OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
    Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js
    Front-end: Vanilla JS, React, ClojureScript, SASS, Google Closure 
    Other Languages: TypeScript, Clojure, C, Java, Python, Swift, Perl, Bash, PHP, C#, VBA

  Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume (HTML & PDF)
  Email: contact@delonnewman.name
  Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
  Github: https://github.com/delonnewman

  Seasoned Software Engineer & Systems Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design
  & deliver user-friendly data-oriented applications, and work through tough data-oriented problems.
  
  Looking for part-time (preferably less than 20 hours) or short term (3 months or less) engagements

  - Over 23 years of experience
  - Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
  - Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
  - Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
  - Polyglot developer
  - Enjoys working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
  - System architecture & design

drnewmanon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2023)

  Location: New Mexico
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No

  Technologies:
    Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript
    Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
    Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
    OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
    Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js
    Front-end: Vanilla JS, React, ClojureScript, SASS, Google Closure 
    Other Languages: TypeScript, Clojure, C, Java, Python, Swift, Perl, Bash, PHP, C#, VBA

  Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume (HTML & PDF)
  Email: contact@delonnewman.name
  Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
  Github: https://github.com/delonnewman

  Seasoned Software Engineer & Systems Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design
  & deliver user-friendly data-oriented applications, and work through tough data-oriented problems.
  
  Looking for part-time (preferably less than 20 hours) or short term (3 months or less) engagements

  - Over 23 years of experience
  - Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
  - Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
  - Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
  - Polyglot developer
  - Enjoys working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
  - System architecture & design

drnewmanon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (December 2023)

SEEKING WORK | New Mexico | Remote

Seasoned Software Engineer & Systems Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough data-oriented problems.

Looking for part-time (preferably less than 20 hours) or short term (3 months or less) engagements

Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume

Email: contact@delonnewman.name

Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name

Github: https://github.com/delonnewman

Highlights:

- Over 23 years of experience

- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare

- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel

- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher

- Polyglot developer, specializing in Ruby & JavaScript

- Enjoy working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)

- System integration & automation

drnewmanon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (November 2023)

SEEKING WORK | New Mexico | Remote

Seasoned Software Engineer & Systems Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design & deliver user-friendly applications, and work through tough data-oriented problems.

Looking for part-time (preferably less than 20 hours) or short term (3 months or less) engagements

Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume (HTML & PDF)

Email: contact@delonnewman.name

Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name

Github: https://github.com/delonnewman

Highlights:

- Over 23 years of experience

- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare

- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel

- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher

- Able to design & build user-friendly data-oriented applications

- Polyglot developer specializing in Ruby, Rails & JavaScript

- Enjoy working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)

- System architecture & design

drnewmanon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (November 2023)

  Location: New Mexico
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No 

  Technologies:
    Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript
    Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
    Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
    OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
    Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js
    Front-end: Vanilla JS, React, ClojureScript, SASS, Google Closure 
    Other Languages: TypeScript, Clojure, C, Java, Python, Swift, Perl, Bash, PHP, C#, VBA

  Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume (HTML & PDF)
  Email: contact@delonnewman.name
  Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
  Github: https://github.com/delonnewman

  Seasoned Software Engineer & Systems Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design
  & deliver user-friendly data-oriented applications, and work through tough data-oriented problems.
  
  Looking for part-time (preferably less than 20 hours) or short term (3 months or less) engagements

  - Over 23 years of experience
  - Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
  - Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
  - Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
  - Polyglot developer
  - Enjoys working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
  - System architecture & design

drnewmanon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (September 2023)

SEEKING WORK | New Mexico | Remote

Seasoned Software Engineer & Systems Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects, design user-friendly applications, and work through tough data-oriented problems.

Looking for part-time (preferably less than 20 hours) or short term (3 months or less) engagements

Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name

Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume (HTML & PDF)

Email: contact@delonnewman.name

Highlights:

- Over 23 years of experience

- Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare

- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel

- Can help you reason through tough problems

- Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher

- Able to design & build user-friendly data-oriented applications

- Polyglot developer

- Enjoy working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)

- System integration & automation

- Experienced working with Ruby, JavaScript and Java/JVM ecosystems

- System architecture & design

drnewmanon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2023)

  Location: New Mexico
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No 

  Technologies:
    Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript/TypeScript, Clojure
    Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
    Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
    OS: Linux, macOS, iOS
    Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js
    Front-end: Vanilla JS, React, ClojureScript, SASS, Google Closure 
    Other Languages: C, Java, Python, Swift, Perl, Bash, PHP, C#, VBA

  Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume (HTML & PDF)
  Email: contact@delonnewman.name
  Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
  Github: https://github.com/delonnewman

  Seasoned Software Engineer & Systems Analyst able to help clients complete stalled projects,
  design user-friendly applications, and work through tough  data-oriented problems.

  Looking for part-time (preferably less than 20 hours) or short term (3 months or less) engagements

  - Over 23 years of experience
  - Over 9 years of experience in Healthcare
  - Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
  - Can help you reason through tough problems
  - Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher
  - Polyglot developer
  - Enjoy working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
  - Able to design and build user-friendly data-oriented applications
  - System integration & automation
  - System architecture & design

drnewmanon CLOS: Integrating Object-Oriented and Functional Programming (2004) [pdf]

Ruby has a meta object protocol. The net effect of the language isn't as powerful as Common Lisp since you don't have code-as-data in method definitions, but Ruby's object system is comparably powerful as CLOS (though made in the image of Smalltalk) it comes with a meta protocol for methods, objects, classes, modules, even lexical variables.

https://ruby-doc.org/3.2.2/Object.html

https://ruby-doc.org/3.2.2/Method.html

https://ruby-doc.org/3.2.2/Class.html

https://ruby-doc.org/3.2.2/Module.html

https://ruby-doc.org/3.2.2/Binding.html

drnewmanon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2023)

  Location: New Mexico
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No 

  Technologies:
    Primary Languages: Ruby, JavaScript, Clojure
    Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, MS Access), Datomic, Redis, MongoDB
    Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Linux SysAdmin
    OS: Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat, Fedora), macOS, iOS
    Back-end: Rails, Sinatra, Node.js
    Front-end: Vanilla JS, React, ClojureScript, SASS, Google Closure 
    Other Languages: TypeScript, C, Java, Python, Swift, Perl, Bash, PHP, C#, VBA, C++, ColdFusion, Scheme, Common Lisp
    Interested in gaining experience with any of the following:
      - Data Science, ML, NLP applications
      - Compilers, Interpreters, Query Engines

  Résumé/CV: https://delonnewman.name/resume.pdf
  Email: contact@delonnewman.name
  Portfolio: https://delonnewman.name
  Github: https://github.com/delonnewman

  Looking for part-time (preferably 10 - 30 hours)

  - Over 23 years of experience
  - Polyglot developer
  - Enjoy working with arcane data formats (e.g. EDI)
  - Build user-friendly data-oriented applications
  - System integration & automation
  - System architecture & design
  - Experienced tech lead, mentor & teacher